Tezcatlipoca

[ tes-kaht-li-poh-kah ]

noun

1. an Aztec god.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Tezcatlipoca¹

< Nahuatl Tēzcatlepōca, perhaps equivalent to tēzca ( tl ) mirror + tle ( tl ) fire + ( po ) pōca smokes (3rd-person singular present verb)

Example Sentences

“It was called Tezcatlipoca — the Jaguar Knight, the Jaguar’s Son Who Rules at Night. And so the Pachuco was a creature of night, so to speak. That suit was not for broad daylight or early in the morning. It’s really for night — the urban night, on top of that, under streetlamps. Eddie encapsulates it. He is the jaguar. That’s his power.”

From Los Angeles Times

The name of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca was Lord of the Smoking Mirror, a reference to obsidian.

From New York Times

“I’m not superstitious, but blessed be Tezcatlipoca!” he quipped, referring to a major Aztec deity associated with providence and sorcery.

From Reuters

The figure is that of Tezcatlipoca, an Aztec god whose name was sometimes translated as "smoking mirror".

From BBC

“Tezcatlipoca was the god of all those things, and more,” my grandfather once told me, when I was a girl in Puebla.

From Nature